Mindful Living

Prosperity Powder and the Dilemma of Whether To Sprinkle or Not To Sprinkle

By Cybéle Elaine Werts

Cybéle Elaine Werts has been writing the Mindful Living column
for several years, publishing it with several local newspapers. She
has also written various other columns including a movie review column
and profiles on Vermonters. She works as a Production Coordinator at
Learning Innovations at WestEd in Williston, Vermont where she does
technical writing, graphic design, and project management.

The other day while surfing the internet waves of ebay.com,
I came upon a product called Prosperity Powder. Its
a little packet of stuff (mostly aromatic spices) that claims to imbue
the owner with prosperity. The idea is to sprinkle it over your wallet
or purse, and wait for a wad of bills to hit you over the head. Its
apparently an accoutrement of the Wiccan religion, but not being Wiccan
myself, I cant say much about how it might work for a believer,
much less me. But my guess is that its not necessarily the powder
itself that attracts the cash, because lets face it - theres
plenty of cinnamon and lemon verbena already in my kitchen cupboard.
Perhaps it has to do with the prayers of the person who made it, or
my own spiritual state of mind when sprinkling it about. Maybe its
like kosher matzos which become kosher by way of some combination of
prayers and strict production practices. Does it make any real difference
if someone, even a holy someone, prays over this powder or this matzo?

If I take the easy way, the lazy way, I might buy the stuff because
the packet has its share of charm and kitsch. But am I, even in this
little act of buying something that makes easy promises, negating some
little bit of my own beliefs about prosperity? My prosperity is a state
of inner consciousness, a balance and awareness that allows the good
things of the world to be attracted to me. Its not just about
Money, but also about Love, Work and other capital letter
things. Prosperity is in the details too, like finding an apartment
in a city with a .05% vacancy rate. Despite the odds, Ive always
had great apartment karma, and it is, as they say, a self-fulfilling
prophesy.

But all these things have to do with praying about affecting peoples
consciousness, not about objects like powder, aromatic or not. On the
surface, spirit seems to be mostly expressed in living things - people,
animals, maybe plants. But sometimes, objects sometimes seem to have
some spirit too. I have a little cobalt blue antique inkwell that my
sister Cindy gave me last year. It has a little of her spirit in it,
and I can feel it every time I hold it up to the light. If I can feel
spirit in objects around me, so perhaps I was wrong about prayers only
being for living things.

When I asked Cindy these questions, I added that I had no problem
with the concepts of my good apartment karma, or the fact
that I could image parking spaces - even on new years
eve in the city because I have experienced them personally. She replied
that the line between living things and objects was kind of wiggly
and where do you draw that line anyway? I dont think shes
talking about being able to levitate the toaster so much as praying
to align yourself with the natural course of the universe. She told
me a story about one day when she was putting wallpaper border up in
a customers living room. The customer had only two rolls and
the room was quite large. After measuring twice, Cindy knew that the
two rolls would be insufficient, so she said a few prayers that the
paper would go around, and asked her customer to do the same. At the
end of the day, Cindy had bordered the whole room! Even now, she cant
explain this experience except to say that maybe prayers can affect
both living things and things that dont seem to be living,
at least from our limited perspective.

The problem is that the prosperity powder, living or not, is in
a way, a graven image. It gives us the feeling that if
we use this product, then we will feel spiritual, or get happy, or
have more money, or whatever. Its the shopping channel of spirituality.
But what about the people who have those little private altars in
their homes? Are these objects just ways to focus their prayer, or
do they somehow concentrate spirit, like my lavender votives whose
complex scent makes me feel as if spirit were near? Or maybe praying
over an object is different than praying to an object as
if it were God itself. How do we know when our prayers have gone so
far that we have lost sight of the object as a vehicle for spirit,
and only see it as one more thing to be owned in the pursuit of Ever
More Stuff? Is there a difference between an object that has spirit
in it, in the sense that God is in everything, and an object being
God?

It all gets even more mushy when you throw in the God and free
choice questions. God put us here to create beautiful things or hurt
each other, and we do both. God also made laws like gravity that act
if not by choice, at least consistently and independently of our wants
and desires. In other words, Ive never believed any amount of
prayer could make it snow tomorrow. On the other hand, Im nothing
if not a lover of the scientific method, and research does support
prayer as a significant factor in healing illness. Where is that line
between sickness that can be healed (inside the mind and body) and
things outside like snow or wallpaper border?

If I could open my mind to the idea that prayer, the energy of
the divine consciousness, is as unlimited as spirit itself, then maybe
there would be no difference. Maybe its not so much about the
packet itself but rather that I was inspired to write these words.
Perhaps that dollar I bid on the Prosperity Powder was after all, a
very good buy.

Cybéle (pronounced C-Bell) lives in Hinesburg with her two
spoiled cats, Boca and Program. Thoughts and comments are welcome at
CybeleW@aol.com.